


this moment will soon be lost in time

by TheJGatsby



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4856144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments from Bellamy and Clarke's relationship through the years</p>
            </blockquote>





	this moment will soon be lost in time

**Author's Note:**

> So this started as like actual sentence-long detailed prompts but I stuck so loosely to them you can basically whittle each one down to one word  
> i. jacket  
> ii. ice cream  
> iii. breakfast  
> iv. music/car/road trip  
> v. beach/sunscreen  
> vi. work  
> Title is from "Still After All these Years" by Noah and the Whale

 

i.

They meet in August, when they get into a bitter rivalry over a particular seat in the university library, and somehow that turns into a teasing, bickering, close friendship. They spend more and more time together, and their lives start bleeding together until suddenly ‘Clarke’ and ‘Bellamy’ have become ‘Clarke-and-Bellamy,’ a set, a unit, a package deal, their friends knowing you can’t really have one without the other. “They’re like peanut butter and jelly,” says their stoner friend Jasper one time. “Good enough on their own but it’s weird to not have both at the same time.”

Naturally, of course, people assume they’re dating, which they always laugh off, but if anyone asked Clarke, she wouldn’t be able to wholeheartedly deny that she wouldn’t _like_ to be dating Bellamy. She just isn’t. Because they’re friends. And no matter how many times Bellamy’s roommate-slash-best non-Clarke friend Miller tells her he is very in love with her and just hasn’t figured it out yet, there’s nothing more sacred to her than friendship, so she’s not going to risk it on something stupid like a crush. She’s already been through that song and dance, when her childhood best friend Wells made everything weird and awkward in high school by confessing his love to her (he later apologized and said he’d like to still be friends, so by the time they both left for different colleges later that year they were back to being friends, though maybe not as close as before).

But that doesn’t mean she’s perfect, so she takes the small indulgences she gets- they’re very casually affectionate, always hugging and playing with each other’s hair and falling asleep on each other. One chilly night, she ends up borrowing his sweatshirt and doesn’t give it back until the smell of him has worn off it, at which point she pretends she “forgot” it was his and had it lying around her room for a long time before giving it back (and if the smell of Clarke’s perfume on it makes something in his chest feel warm, he won’t say anything).

ii.

Bellamy’s mother was never much of a mom, and it’s been a long time since he cared either way. He grew up fast, and his little sister Octavia had him as a role model and caretaker, so it’s never bothered him overmuch that their mom kind of sucked. He did worry when he went off to college, but he was only an hour away, and Octavia was eleven and reasonably independent, so he just sort of did his worrying quietly from campus and went home as often as he could. As a result of all that, nothing about his mother’s death surprised him- not the part where she died drunk driving, nor the part where Octavia hadn’t seen her for a week beforehand, and her response to the cops on the doorstep telling her her mother was dead was a mild, “Oh, so that’s where she’s been.”

He arranges for her to be cremated, because it’s cheaper, but there’s no funeral or memorial or anything, because he doesn’t know anyone he would invite. It wasn’t as if his mom ever involved either of her kids in her life, anyway. All it really means is that he has to take a few weeks off of school and get his life re-arranged around suddenly becoming the guardian of his thirteen-year-old sister.

Clarke is his lifeline during those weird, difficult months. She treats their apartment as a second home, hanging out there in her free time, doing random chores he’s too tired to remember, grocery shopping when he forgets, generally keeping his life together without him really noticing. He didn’t anticipate how hard it would be becoming a parent in the middle of his college education, and he’ll readily admit that he probably wouldn’t have made it without Clarke.

The other thing he doesn’t anticipate is how fast Clarke and Octavia will bond. It happens when he’s not looking, he just comes home one day to find them sprawled out on the couch watching Degrassi on Clarke’s laptop, passing a half-empty container of ice cream between them. They look up when he walks in the door, and something about the whole scene, his two favorite people, the way Clarke smiles at him when she greets him, makes something finally click for him, and it turns out Miller was right about him being totally in love with her.

Bellamy had a shitty childhood, so he’s no expert on what a family is supposed to be like, but he knows that Clarke and Octavia are the best family he could have found.

iii.

Clarke and Bellamy have been together for about two weeks the first time she spends the night. Well, in the biblical sense. She’s spent the night plenty before, she practically lives there half the time anyway, but she hasn’t since they started dating. Octavia gets invited to a sleepover birthday party one weekend, and spends the three days leading up to it trying to very conspicuously remind Bellamy that he’ll have the house totally to himself for the whole weekend. He just tells her she’s way too invested in his sex life, especially for a fifteen year old, and she just rolls her eyes.

(The sex is excellent, and not only because it’s _Clarke_ and they’re best friends and he loves her (though he hasn’t told her that yet and plans on waiting a reasonable, mature amount of time to do so).)

In the morning, he wakes to an empty bed and a smell that’s vaguely like bacon and eggs but significantly more sinister. He shuffles to the kitchen and smiles at the sight of Clarke frowning down at a frying pan, dressed in one of his old t-shirts. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he presses a kiss to her neck and murmurs, “That smells awful, Clarke, are you planning on poisoning me? Was last night that bad?”

“Terrible,” she says, deadpan, turning her head to kiss him properly. They both taste like sleep, but she doesn’t mind. “I wanted to do breakfast, but obviously I have failed spectacularly.”

“Yeah you _are_ pretty spectacular,” he says, smiling into the crook of her neck. She rolls her eyes, but can’t help a grin. “Wanna just go to IHOP?”

“God, yes.”

They get distracted making out on the kitchen counter, and don’t end up making it to breakfast till the afternoon.

iv.

As Octavia’s high school graduation approaches, she starts dropping hints about a cross-country road trip to celebrate her newfound independence or something. Bellamy seems to get a dark cast over him every time she mentions it, though, so after a couple of weeks she goes to Clarke and talks through it with her, knowing that if anyone can convince her brother it’s his girlfriend.

Clarke and Bellamy are nestled together on the couch watching some unremarkable dude action movie when she brings it up. “Octavia was talking to me about going on a road trip this summer since she’s leaving for school in the fall.” Bellamy, predictably, glowers. “Come on, Bell, she really wants to do this. Why not?”

“Because I’m already going to miss her when she leaves, okay? I know I’m supposed to be all happy to be an empty-nester or whatever, but she’s my sister and I love her and as much as I support her wanting to spend time with her friends I don’t want her gone all summer.” He glares at the wall, but turns the look on Clarke when she starts laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“She wants to go on a trip with _you_ , dumbass.” He blushes and looks away, humming sheepishly. “I know you Blakes like to think you’re stony and stoic, but she’s going to miss you too. She said you’d never had a family vacation as kids, so she wanted to do one before she left. She just didn’t know how to ask since you got all grumpy whenever she tried to bring it up.”

The next morning, he says to Octavia, “So Clarke talked to me.”

“And?” she asks through a mouthful of cereal.

“I talked to my boss and I can get two months of the summer off.” A grin splits his sister’s face and he can’t help smiling in return. “Clarke’ll watch the apartment while we’re gone, so-”

“Wait, Clarke’s not coming?” O’s face falls, and Bellamy frowns.

“No, isn’t it a family thing?”

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Clarke _is_ family, Bell. You’re practically married, and she did about eight times as much parenting as Mom ever did, so I think she qualifies as an honorary Blake. Besides, I want her to come, I like Clarke.”

They leave a week after Octavia’s graduation and drive all the way to California and back, singing along to every song on the radio, and no matter how much Bellamy grumbles at first, they’re not even three weeks in by the time he’s belting Halsey right along with them.

v.

When the subject of marriage finally comes up, about six years into their relationship, it dissolves almost immediately into one of their familiar, awful money arguments. Specifically, the idea of a wedding becomes, to them, the greatest point of contention in their relationship- Clarke insists that, no matter how big and extravagant they want a ceremony to be, her mother has the means and willingness to pay for it. As he always has, though, Bellamy bristles at the thought of letting anyone pay for anything for him, and no matter how much Clarke insists it’s not charity and her mother can more than afford it and it’s traditional for the bride’s family to pay anyway, he still won’t accept it. So they table the discussion, agreeing that they’d like to get married, but if they can never find a way to talk about it without it becoming a fight, they’re happy to continue living in sin.

When Octavia graduates from college, Clarke and Bellamy drive down to visit her for a week and help her get settled into her new apartment. She’s secured a job in the same town as her school, so she’s just moving off-campus, but Bellamy still insists on going to help, because he always wants to take care of his baby sister.

In the spirit of actually enjoying their vacation, Octavia cajoles her brother and his girlfriend into going to the beach for a day between putting all the boxes in her house and getting everything unpacked. Clarke, the taskmaster, itches at the thought of leaving everything unfinished, but she gives in without much of a fight, shrugging and pulling her bikini out of her bag with a nonchalant, “What the hell, it’ll get done at some point.”

Clarke, being pale, was raised to apply sunscreen religiously when outdoors for extended periods of time- no excuses. Bellamy, on the other hand, apparently never received this instruction. “I’m naturally tan, it’s fine,” he says flippantly, stretching out on the blanket and propping his hands behind his head.

“You’re going to get _skin cancer_ ,” she insists, waving the bottle of sunscreen in his face. He lifts his aviators to roll his eyes at her and with a scowl she drops the bottle on his chest. “When you die at age 40 of malignant melanoma I’m going to talk shit at your funeral,” Clarke says stubbornly, settling back and closing her eyes. He leans over to kiss her on the cheek, but she pushes him away, grinning, so he stands and picks her up and carries her, laughing and protesting, to the water. “Don’t you dare drop me, Bellamy!” she shrieks, laughing.

“What was that?” he asks, grinning, tipping her towards the water. She clings even tighter to his neck and he pulls her back up. “Nah, princess, you know I’d never- whoops.” Clarke falls into the water with a scream and immediately comes up spluttering, then tackles him underneath.

When they finally drag themselves back up onto the sand, they both feel like their throats are lined with salt, and Clarke can feel the beginnings of a sunburn on her shoulders, but they’re feeling that pleasant exhaustion of a beach day. They drag their beach blanket under an umbrella’s shade and lay down, curled close with their hands laced together and legs tangled, trading sleepy kisses.

“Hey, Clarke?” Bellamy whispers as she’s drifting off. She hums sleepily, not opening her eyes, and he kisses her cheek and says, “If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?”

“Obviously,” she replies, smiling. He presses his forehead to hers and she thinks he says, “good,” but she’s asleep by then so she can’t say for sure.

vi.

Usually, when Clarke sees Bellamy at her work, it’s because he’s questioning a witness or working a case or, rarely and unsettlingly, waiting for someone he knows from the precinct to come out of surgery after a line-of-duty injury. He always makes time to stop by the emergency room and say hi, flirt in his dorky way, and give her a kiss before he leaves. So it’s not odd for her to see Bellamy in the hospital, but it’s an entirely different and significantly more terrible animal to see him being rushed in on a gurney, bloody and pale.

Everything slows down for a moment as her brain struggles to process the reality of Bellamy, unconscious, injured, _shot_. Then she’s leaning hard against the nearest wall, struggling to breathe. She’s dimly aware of Bellamy’s partner, Miller, getting her attention and talking to her, but she doesn’t hear anything he’s saying, just nods mutely, and he gives up after a moment and just guides her to a waiting room chair.

Hours later, he’s out of surgery, and Octavia’s on her way up, and Clarke’s slumped next to his bed, holding his hand and waiting for him to wake up. She’s almost asleep, completely exhausted, when he opens his eyes and croaks out, “Hey, Clarke, fancy seeing you here.”

She gasps his name and sits up quickly, throwing her arms around his neck.

“It’s funny,” he continues hoarsely, “because you work at the hospital, and I’m in the hospital, so it’s totally not a coincidence.”

“You’re not funny on drugs,” she says fondly, pulling back and kissing his knuckles. “Do you need anything? Water? I can call a nurse.”

“Nah, I’m good,” he replies, blithe and grinning. “How many bullets did they dig out of me?”

“Three,” she replies. “One in your arm, two in your abdomen, but nothing vital was hit, you’re okay.”

“Awesome,” he drawls, druggy grin still on his face. “Do I get to keep the bullets?”

“Somehow I don’t think so,” Clarke says drily.

“That would be so kickass, though!” Bellamy whines. “We could frame them. We could display them in our house, it’d be a conversation piece.”

“We don’t have a house, Bellamy.” She can’t stop smiling- she’d been so convinced he was going to die, so afraid for him, the relief is heady and overwhelming.

“Yeah,” he says, “not _yet_. But eventually. If you want that, you know, the whole American dream deal.” He yawns widely. “Shitty suburb, picket fence, two-point-five kids and an ill-trained dog, the whole nine yards.” He shuts his eyes and presses a kiss to the back of her hand. “If you want it, we’ll do it. Anything for you,” he says sleepily.

Clarke squeezes his hand. “Get some rest, Bellamy. I love you.”

“Love you too,” he mumbles, smiling.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://www.thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)


End file.
